Nov 08, 2018 - Sale 2492
/

Sale 2492 - Lot 353

Price Realized: $ 2,080
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"MY IRREVERENCE & DISRESPECT ARE PRETTY EXCLUSIVELY FOR [MARY BAKER EDDY]" MARK TWAIN. Autograph Letter Signed, "SL. Clemens," to "Dear Sir," thanking him for trying to help correct Twain's statements of fact, pointing out that he has made no statements subject to correction, explaining that Twain's new book is only partly concerned with Christian Science, inviting him to submit a brief article for publication, pointing out that his own disrespect and irreverence are for Mrs. [Mary Baker] Eddy--not her followers, and, in a postscript written at end of second page and continued vertically in left margin of first page, additionally Signed "SLC": "I am suggesting to Munro that he get your article into the Feb. number--otherwise, short or long, it might be too late for my book. In the meantime, can you send me 'Retrospection & Introspection' [Eddy's autobiography, 1891]?" 2 pages, 8vo, written on 2 sheets; horizontal folds. Riverdale, 5 December 1902
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

"I am glad to have the book & the other printed matter . . . . But as helps in 'verifying or correcting statements of fact' in my articles they will not be of service to me. I have made no statements of fact that can require that sort of doctoring.

"Now that you are going to write an article . . . I will leave all the correcting to you. I suppose you will 'correct' by assertion--as you did in the MS. which you left here yesterday. It is the easiest way.

"The book which I am going to publish will be set up and printed in February. It is not a book on Xn [Christian] Science--that is only a part of it; it will contain matter on various subjects--stories, essays, etc. If your article shall turn out to be very brief, I shall hope to get it in, but not otherwise, for there is not going to be much room to spare; particularly if I should conclude to finish my series with a Portrait of Mrs. Eddy 'drawn with her own pen'--a thing which I want to do if I find the time; for my irreverence & disrespect are pretty exclusively for her, not for her flock. I believe the flock to be honest & sincere, & that she is neither. . . ."

Whatever book Twain is intending to publish in February of 1903, it was not published in that year. Twain's portrait of Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, was published in 1907 under the title Christian Science.